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Continuing her work focused on experimenting with garment construction, Teak brings eight new wall works exploring the form of a parasol. Inspired by a “build-your-own” parasol kit, she began serially designing her own two-dimensional parasol shapes and vector graphic motifs. The motifs equalize a wide range of her personal interests in art and fashion (including idiosyncratic lingerie and garment details, antiquated designed objects, and online shopping). The construction of each work uses a combination of machine technologies and hand work, applying hand sewn and glued fabric to CNC cut wood.

 

Teak’s parasols tease out the categorical haziness of processes traditionally relegated to craft and design and prod the dialectical opposition of utility and ornament. Not exactly a picture and not necessarily made to be used, we are asked to account for what they aren’t in order to recognize what they are.  The final product is something uncanny, upending tradition and privileging appearance over utility in order to arrive at the singular place of art.

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Text by Ramsey Alderson

 

Teak Ramos (b. 1992 Batavia, Ohio) lives and works in New York. Previous group and dual exhibitions include The Purloined Masterpiece. Images as Time Machines at Kunstsammlungen der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, Vienna, Germany (2023); You can have my brain at Museum of Contemporary Art Rome, Rome, Italy (2022); and Kavita B. Schmid at Eli Ping

Frances Perkins, New York (2016).  She studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago

under Gaylen Gerber